Provided are systems that address the need for development of instructional materials from a content database in an efficient, comprehensive and flexible manner. In particular, the system employs a content database that is refined and updated by system users, wherein users access the content database to develop, publish, license and deploy learning applications to others.
Generally, the instructional field, including educational settings, requires tools for learning. Those tools are broadly referred to as “learning applications”. In a conventional application, this may be a textbook or other written material. In conventional settings, the learning application that is a written material suffers a disadvantage in that the written materials can be expensive and are generally not customizable. Accordingly, large sections of the written materials may not be of interest in a particular learning situation and, in fact, not be needed or even addressed in the instructional setting. This forces the instructor or supervisor of the instructional setting to either remove, or inform the learners to disregard, entire sections of material from the learning application.
In the educational setting, an individual teacher may remove material from a book or other resource and recreate their own documents, lesson plans, courses, etc., from the original source material(s). In other words, in a conventional setting a teacher may take a learning object in a printed format and restructure them to fit their own needs. This is, however, an expensive, time-consuming and rather limited process. In addition, the individual teacher has difficulty in leveraging the effort expended in modifying the learning object to a learning application to other teachers who would be interested in using the developed learning application.
There is a need in the field of instructional learning, such as in educational and industry settings, for learning/curriculum management and delivery systems that are flexible and broadly defined so that a large amount of content can be readily accessed, manipulated and tailored into a learning tool that is particularly well-suited for the application of interest.
Although tools are generally available for educators to employ in developing course content and learning evaluation, they suffer various disadvantage including limitations on development of the content database from which content is drawn and deployed. Conventional products and systems hinder collaborative contributions that can serve to continuously update and regulate the content database to provide the most valuable and user-friendly content database for a variety of learning applications. Accordingly, although instructors and instructional designers in education and industry fields may have access to a large collection of digital multimedia instructional resources, the organization for deployment of learning applications is hindered and constrained by the structure of those resources.